Wednesday, March 07, 2012

Apple will make one of its fabled announcements on Wednesday, and the tech world is buzzing. All of the elements are in place: The Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco has an enigmatic and colorful design stenciled across it, tech journalists are lining up like cattle to gawk, and soon we will all know about the latest version of the iPad, expected to make its debut.

There is a problem, however. At the same time as the tech world will celebrate Apple — even post-Steve Jobs Apple, run now by Tim Cook — with waves of hype, we have all just started to reckon with the fact that these devices are made overseas under brutal conditions that have led to documented deaths, chemical poisonings, collapses from exhaustion and more.

They are assembled by hand by workers putting in incredible hours, and by Apple’s own metrics, the conditions are in violation of labor laws in both China and the United States.